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Edmond OK Police Chief J.D. Younger |
The Dirty, Dirty Secrets of Edmond, Oklahoma
On April 29, 2019, Edmond, Oklahoma police shot and killed an unarmed 17-year-old black high school student named Isaiah Lewis, who was running nude through a neighborhood.
You can read about that here.
The family has been trying to meet with city officials since the shooting.
Today, Isaiah's family received a sharp response from the City of Edmond.
The insensitive letter accuses the family of trying to put the city in a bad light.
Younger's force has in the past misused their authority to harass a
Hate Trackers journalist after we released photographs of an Edmond state senate candidate and local pastor named Paul Blair allegedly wearing a Ku Klux Klan robe outside his church.
Blair runs a number of anti-gay and Islamphobic hate groups in Oklahoma.
Edmond Detective Chris Cook threatened the reporter with jail if he did not stop reporting on the Blairs.
What launched the Edmond Police Department's extortion attempt was a Facebook response made to Paul Blair's wife Cynthia.
That post said, "He needs to decide which god he serves. I see your sons and your husband have all been too cowardly to ever serve their country. No, they’re busy sitting their . . . on the sidelines and using their mouths. By the way, there’s a mass printing of those KKK pics of Paul being prepared for a citywide mailing in Edmond.”
Our reporters, however, don't fall to extortion attempts - even ones coming from the Edmond Police Department.
Despite his private use of the Edmond Police Department to push people around, Paul Blair lost his 2016 state senate race. The pastor threw a mega-tantrum over it too, as lampooned by a Oklahoma City satire site
here.
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The envy of Klansman everywhere is a giant white cross just outside the Edmond city limits. |
The City of Edmond was - and some will claim still is - one of Oklahoma's last remaining sundown towns. Such towns would not allow blacks inside city limits after sundown. In fact, it's only been in modern times that realtors there began selling homes to People of Color.
Edmond is also home to a satellite school of the
Christian Heritage Academy, which was originally founded so white people could get their children away from blacks being bused into the Oklahoma City school system.
That satellite school is helmed by Paul Blair.
Klan infiltration into the Oklahoma justice system isn't exactly a rare thing.
Hate Trackers recently revealed that the Tulsa County Court Clerk has an assistant named Bonnie Kukla, who is with the Knight's Party of the KKK.
Tulsa, also, has a history of shooting unarmed black people, such as
the killing of Terence Crutcher in 2016 by their police officer Betty Shelby.
Shelby lost her job at the Tulsa PD, but was quickly snatched up by the notorious Rogers County OK Sheriff's Department even though she'd been declared unfit for duty.
Due to Edmond, Oklahoma's unique nature, it and its residents have been the subjects of frequent articles by us.
Most recently, we reported on a
nationwide gathering of anti-gay figures Paul Blair was hosting at his Fairview Baptist Church, about an
Edmond veterinarian's gay slurs, and a home builder residing there who is fond of
lodging racist stereotypes against Native Americans.
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Edmond, Oklahoma was once promoted as having "No Negroes" |
Late last year, black students transferred from Edmond North High School, due to what they described as a "culture of racism."
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Grafffiti left by former Edmond resident |
One
student told a KFOR reporter, “There's a bunch of black people here that feel like they don't belong, and I'm one of those people.”
Last month, a former Edmond resident named
Allison Christine Johnson was arrested after vandalizing numerous locations with racist and anti-Semitic graffiti.
Racism isn't Edmond's only bread and butter, when it comes to hate. It's a bad place for LGBTQs as well.
Beyond
Paul Blair's well-publicized homophobia, the City of Edmond calls the Queen of Gay Hate a favorite resident. The ill-famed
Anita Bryant now calls Edmond home.
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Edmond's Queen of Gay Hate Anita Bryant |
During the 1970's the pop singer launched a national campaign targeting gays and lesbians where she tried everything from banning adoptions to getting LGBT school teachers fired. After running years of swindles in Pigeon Fork and Branson she fled to Edmond to avoid bill and tax collectors along with unpaid employees, who were all hot on her tail.
Clearly, Edmond, Oklahoma is a place best avoided by people of good will.
One certainly doesn't really know who is running things at the Edmond Police Department, be it Chief J.D. Younger or someone that could possibly be with the Ku Klux Klan...or someone wanting to come after you with a baseball bat.
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